Eight companies win AUKUS Electronic Warfare Innovation Challenge

The three AUKUS partners have named eight companies as winners of the inaugural AUKUS Electronic Warfare Innovation Challenge. Some 173 qualified suppliers applied for the Challenge across all three nations

Three Australian companies, Advanced Design Technology Pty Ltd, Inovor Technologies Pty Ltd and Penten Pty Ltd; four British companies and consortia, Amiosec Ltd, University of Liverpool, Roke Manor Research Ltd and Autonomous Devices Ltd (UK); and a US company, Distributed Spectrum have been selected for contracts with their respective Departments of Defence.

The Australian component of this Challenge was run by the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator, ASCA, which said that each company has participated in co-development workshops to refine their innovations, in collaboration with Defence, to develop project execution plans detailing how they would deliver their EW technologies to Defence.

“We’ve also worked on developing classified advanced algorithms for the use of AI in terms of processing the vast amounts of data which are picked up by our sonar buoys, which collectively will greatly enhance our decision-making advantage in the undersea domain,” added Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles. This will result in a joint capability upgrade of the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft operated by the three AUKUS partners.

The official AUKUS Defence Ministers Meeting Communique stated, “The selection of these companies demonstrates the important contributions that our trilateral commercial sectors and innovation bases can make in addressing critical operational requirements.

“Building on the success of this first challenge, the Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister were pleased to endorse plans for a robust two-year agenda that will increase collaboration between and among our innovation centres of excellence.  Through this collaboration, AUKUS partners will leverage innovative tools to reach our entrepreneurs and actively solicit new and powerful capabilities from our trilateral innovation ecosystem and industrial base.

“In coordination with industry associations representing the trilateral defence industrial base, the Advanced Capabilities Industry Forum continues to provide an opportunity for representatives across government and industry to exchange ideas and deepen industrial collaboration in Pillar II.  By the end of this year, AUKUS partners will have convened meetings in each country and facilitated discussions with technology and policy subject matter experts to increase understanding and information sharing.”

The competition was run to find low cost, disposable, high volume and highly autonomous electromagnetic technology that can detect enemy actions or protect against them, according to the UK Ministry of Defence (UK MoD).

The Challenge was run as 3 individual competitions by DASA in the UK, ASCA and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) in the US. The 3 innovation competitions called for proposals to identify electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) technology solutions to help give the AUKUS nations a strategic edge in targeting and to provide protection against adversarial electromagnetic-targeting capabilities. EMS is a heavily congested, contested, complex and competitive environment and there is an increasing need for low cost, disposable, high volume and highly autonomous capabilities to achieve advantage.

The EW competition was the first in what will be a series of AUKUS Innovation Challenges, setting the template for future advanced defence technology competitions run by the 3 partners.